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Still this did not prevent M. Fortunat from adding, with the assurance of a man who does not even suspect the possibility of a refusal: "Now, when shall we set about our task?" "Never!" cried Chupin, violently; and, rising, he continued: "No! I wouldn't let my good mother eat bread earned in that way it would strangle her! Turn spy! I? Thanks some one else may have the job!"
However I know a man, formerly the Count de Chalusse's confidential agent, who might aid you in this task." "And this man's name?" "Is Isidore Fortunat. I saved his card for you. Here it is." M. Wilkie took it up, placed it carefully in his pocket, and then exclaimed: "That being the case, I consent to sign, but after this you need not complain.
The portrait sketched by the wine-vendor fully corresponded with the description given by the hotelkeeper in the Rue de Helder. Accordingly, M. Fortunat drained his glass, and threw fifty centimes on the counter. Then, crossing the street, he boldly rang at the door of Madame d'Argeles's house.
M. Fortunat ascended the stairs very slowly, for he felt the necessity of regaining all his composure, and it was not until he had brought himself to a proper frame of mind that he rang the bell. A small servant, M. Wilkie's fag, who took his revenge in robbing his employer most outrageously, came to the door, and began by declaring that his master was out of town.
M. Fortunat must have received her letter by this time: he would undoubtedly expect her on Tuesday, and it only remained for her to invent some excuse which would give her a couple of hours' liberty without awakening suspicion. She rose early the next morning, and had almost completed her toilette, when she heard some one in the passage outside rapping at the door of Madame Leon's room.
The count never having acknowledged her as his daughter, she will be left actually without bread, while her father's millions go to enrich the state." "That will suffice, monsieur; I will think of it. And now, enough!" The dismissal was so imperious that M. Fortunat bowed and went off, completely bewildered by this denouement. "She's crazy!" he said to himself.
This objection, grave as it appeared, did not seem to disturb M. Fortunat. "Don't worry about that, Victor," he replied. "Under such circumstances, a mother wouldn't try to see her son from a rapidly moving carriage. She will undoubtedly alight, and contrive some means of passing and repassing him of touching him, if possible.
There's nothing better for bringing a drunken man to his senses." M. Fortunat left the restaurant, almost on the run, for he feared that he might be pursued and overtaken by M. Casimir. But after he had gone a couple of hundred paces, he paused, not so much to take breath, as to collect his scattered wits; and though the weather was cold, he seated himself on a bench to reflect.
Lavish of details as she had been in telling her own story, it was evident that she was determined to exercise a prudent reserve in everything connected with the De Chalusse family; and M. Fortunat inwardly cursed this, to him, most unseasonable discretion.
"Gone!" she murmured; "gone! without a thought of me! Or does he believe me to be like all the rest? But I will find him again. That man Fortunat, who ascertained addresses for M. de Chalusse, will find Pascal for me." Few people have any idea of the great number of estates which, in default of heirs to claim them, annually revert to the government.
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